The Gospel of St. Luke

Schmidt Number: S-2057

On-line since: 29th January, 2008

Sanctuaries
of Leadership in ancient Atlantis. The Nirmanakaya of Buddha and the
Nathan Jesus-child. The Adam-soul before the Fall. The Reincarnation
of Zarathustra in the Solomon Jesus-child.

The facts underlying
the Gospels — particularly that of St. Luke — will become
increasingly complicated as we proceed. I must therefore ask you to
bear in mind, especially to-day, that as the lectures are given as a
consecutive series, a single one, or even several, cannot be
understood unless studied in connection with the rest. This applies
particularly to the present lecture and the one to follow; so you
must wait until to-morrow before asking how the various facts to be
presented are connected with what has already been said on other
occasions.

In the last lecture
we heard that the Nirmanakaya of Buddha manifested itself to the
world at the moment when, according to the writer of the Gospel of
St. Luke, the proclamation was made to the shepherds. Buddhist
conceptions that flowed into Christianity were thereby given to the
world in a new form and were rejuvenated through the circumstance
that the protective astral sheath of the Nathan Jesus-child —
the sheath that is detached from the growing human being at puberty
— was absorbed by the Nirmanakaya of Buddha and became one with it
in the twelfth year of Jesus' life. From that moment onwards we have to do
with a definite entity consisting of the Nirmanakaya (or spiritual
body) of Buddha and the protective astral sheath that had been
detached from the twelve-year-old Jesus-child.

In ordinary life,
when the protective astral sheath is cast off in the course of
development and the astral body is actually born, the sheath
dissolves into the universal astral world. In the case of an average
person of our time, the astral sheath would not be suitable for
incorporation in a higher Being such as Buddha in his Nirmanakaya.
There was something very special about the astral sheath which was
cast off at that time and through its union with the Nirmanakaya of
Buddha rejuvenated the whole of Buddhism. In other words, a unique
Being must have been incarnated in the body of this
Jesus-child — a Being from whom proceeded the forces that were
absorbed by the astral sheath and contained the rejuvenating power
indicated in the lecture yesterday. It must have been no ordinary
human being but a very special Being who grew up in the Jesus-child
from birth to the twelfth year and was able to infuse the
rejuvenating forces into the discarded astral sheath.

To form an idea of
how a child could possibly work upon his sheaths in a way differing
from the normal, the facts must be approached by means of a
comparison.

If we follow the life
of the human being evolving under normal conditions from birth to
later stages, to the twentieth, thirtieth and fortieth years, we can
perceive how the various forces that are present at birth in
rudimentary form gradually make their appearance. The child grows
both physically and spiritually; the forces of soul develop by
degrees. (How this takes place can be read in my book
The Education of the Child in the light of Anthroposophy.)
[ 1 ]
Try to picture to yourselves how the forces of the mind and
intellect develop in the child; how at the seventh, fourteenth and
twenty-first years certain powers not in operation before make their
appearance or are forthcoming in greater strength. Try to imagine how
this process takes place in the normal course of human life, and now
suppose that we wish to make an experiment with life; we wish to make
it possible for a young human being to develop in a way that is less
normal and less in conformity with the customs of our present age. We
wish to give him a special opportunity of grasping with a certain
freshness, and not in the ordinary way, the material usually
assimilated between the twelfth and eighteenth years, so that he does
not absorb it as others do, but retains a kind of inventive power,
continuing to work creatively upon it. Suppose we wish to make such a
child into a specially creative human being. In that case we shall
not allow him to grow up as other children normally do.

I say expressly that
this is a hypothetical experiment only and is not meant to be
immediately put into practice. I speak of it by way of comparison
only and do not recommend it as an ideal of education! Thus
supposedly we wish to train a human being to develop an especially
creative turn of mind, not only keeping his thinking very alert but
continuing, even at a later age, to unfold inventive powers. To begin
with, we should have to keep such a child from learning what other
children learn directly after the ages of six or seven; the usual
school-subjects taught to other children would have to be withheld
from him. Until his tenth or eleventh year he would as far as
possible be kept at play and be taught very little in the way of
ordinary school-subjects, so that at the age of nine he would
probably still be unable to add up figures and at the age of eight
still hardly able to read. Then we should have to begin at the age of
eight or nine with all that a child usually learns when he is six or
seven years old. Under these conditions the faculties of the human
being develop quite differently and the soul makes something
altogether different of what is imparted to it. Such a child would
retain the forces of childhood (which are usually suppressed by
current methods of education) until his tenth or eleventh year; he
would tackle his lessons with a far greater activity of soul and have
a much stronger grasp of the subjects. His faculties would thus
become highly productive. It would be essential to keep such a child
in a childlike state as long as possible, and then a clairvoyant
would perceive that the astral sheath stripped off at puberty
actually contains youthful, vigorous forces, very different from
those usually in evidence. This astral sheath could then be used by a
Being such as Buddha in his Nirmanakaya. Not only would a
prolongation of the years of youth be achieved by such an experiment
but certain childlike, youthful forces would be able to permeate the
astral sheath, so that a Being who were to descend from spiritual
heights could be nourished and rejuvenated by these forces.

Nobody, however,
should attempt to make this experiment; it is not an ideal for
education. Certain things must still be left to the Gods. Gods can do
this kind of thing, but not man. And if you hear of some personality
destined to do creative work in a particular field that he seemed for
a long time to be untalented and was for years considered a
simpleton, that intelligence developed in him only much
later — then you will know that the Gods instituted this
experiment; they guarded the childhood of such a human being and made
him fit to learn only at a later period what is learnt much earlier
in normal life. This is especially the case when wide-awake children
easily grasp stories told to them, yet when they go to school learn
nothing at all. The Gods are making with them the experiment of which
I have spoken.

Something of the kind
— only on a far, far grander scale — had to happen in the
case of the Jesus-child who was then to deliver to the Nirmanakaya of
Buddha such an infinitely fertile astral sheath. (Here we come to a
mysterious fact which everyone is free to believe or not to believe,
but which may now be communicated to duly prepared Anthroposophists.
Examine all the facts at your disposal in the Gospels or in history
and you will find everything substantiated by the facts of the
physical plane if you approach these facts in the right way and do
not judge too precipitately. The occultist who presents facts of the
higher worlds entrusts them to humanity; and if they come from the
right source he can say: you may test them as severely as you like,
but if you do so fairly, you will find them all substantiated by what
can be learnt in the physical world from documents and the findings
of science.)

It was essential that
there should be born of the parents spoken of in the Gospel of St.
Luke a child who brought with him youthful forces of a very special
kind and that these forces should be preserved in their pristine
healthiness and vigour.

Under ordinary
circumstances no child could have been found in whom the forces of
childhood and youth were present in the state of freshness required
at that time. In the whole range of humanity, if normal conditions
alone had prevailed, nowhere could such an Individuality, nowhere
could parents have been found such as were necessary for an
incarnation of that kind. Very special measures were essential. To
understand this we must recall certain facts already known to
us.

Present-day humanity
can be traced back through various epochs to the primeval humanity of
ancient Atlantis. Atlantean humanity in turn leads back to that of
ancient Lemuria. Spiritual science is able to reveal facts concerning
the evolution of humanity very different from those presented by
external science which can have recourse only to data of the
material world. Spiritual science tells us that humanity passed
through a stage of Graeco-Latin civilization which was preceded by
the Egypto-Chaldean, the ancient Persian and the ancient Indian
civilizations. Then we come to the great catastrophe which entirely
changed the face of the Earth. Before that catastrophe a great
continent stretched across the area now covered by the Atlantic Ocean:
this was ancient Atlantis. The regions occupied to-day by the
European, Asiatic and African peoples were mostly still under water.
Through the great Atlantean catastrophe the whole countenance of the
Earth was changed. Humanity had for the most part settled in Atlantis
and underwent evolution there. The constitution of the men of
Atlantis was, of course, very different from that of men to-day.

When the time of the
catastrophe drew near, the great clairvoyant leaders and priests,
foreseeing what was to happen, guided men to the East, and also to
the West. Those who were led to the West were the ancestors of the
later American Indians. Our own progenitors too were among the old
Atlanteans. The inhabitants of Atlantis were in their turn the
descendants of an earlier and again very different humanity living on
the continent of ancient Lemuria between the present continents of
Asia, Africa and Australia. (You will find a detailed account in my book
Occult Science
[ 2 ]
and I will now select the relevant facts only.)

When we look back in
the Akashic Chronicle to very ancient times the most wonderful
corroboration is forthcoming of what is to be read in the Bible and
other religious texts; indeed, it is only then that we learn to
understand their contents in the right way. The reference in the
Bible to a single pair of human beings, Adam and Eve, from whom all
humanity has descended, was a problem with which men in the
mid-nineteenth century were deeply preoccupied from the scientific
standpoint. The Akashic Chronicle reveals that the Earth is of
immense antiquity and that even the Lemurian epoch was preceded by
another. We learn from the book
Occult Science
that the Earth is the
re-embodiment of the earlier planetary embodiments of Old Moon, Old
Sun and Old Saturn. We learn too that the Earth, in the course of its
gradual evolution, was destined to add the Ego, the fourth principle
of human nature, to the other three bodies which had been developed
during the previous embodiments: the physical body (in rudimentary
form) on Old Saturn, the etheric body on Old Sun, the astral body on
Old Moon. Everything that preceded the Lemurian epoch was merely
preparation for the Earth's mission. During the Lemurian epoch man
assumed a form that made it possible for him to develop his fourth
principle, the Ego. At that time the first seed began to form for the
development of an Ego in the other three principles. Hence we can say
that the changes which took place on Earth enabled man to become the
bearer of an Ego. Before the Lemurian epoch the Earth was also
inhabited, but by human beings who as yet bore no Ego within them.
They consisted of the principles that had been brought over from
their former development during the planetary evolutions of Old
Saturn, Old Sun and Old Moon. These human beings consisted of
physical body, etheric body, astral body. We know of the processes in
the universe which led to the next stage in man's evolution. At the
beginning of its present embodiment the Earth was united with Sun and
Moon; then the Sun separated off, leaving behind a planetary body
comprising the present Earth and Moon. If the Earth had remained
united with the Moon, man's whole make-up would have become hard and
ligneous, would have shrivelled. In order to avert this it was
necessary for all the Moon-substances and beings to be cast out.
Thereby the human form was rescued from the danger of hardening and
it became possible for man to assume his present structure. It was
only after the separation of the Moon that the possibility arose for
him to become the bearer of an Ego. This did not, of course, take
place all at once. After the Sun had slowly separated and while the
Moon was still contained within the Earth, certain conditions arose
which prevented the further evolution of mankind; physical matter
became increasingly dense and a process of hardening had, in fact,
already begun. Human souls — they were then at a lower stage of
development — were passing through incarnations, through
successive embodiments; in other words, man's in-most being left his
outer form and passed through a spiritual world in order then to
reappear in a new incarnation. But before the separation of the Moon
a difficult period occurred in the evolution of the Earth. Certain
human souls who, having left their bodies, were living in the
spiritual world, wanted to descend again to the Earth; but the human
substance now to be found there was too hard and ligneous to enable
them to incarnate. A time came when souls wishing to descend found it
impossible to incarnate again because the earthly bodies were
unsuitable for them. Only the very strongest souls were able to
master the hardened matter sufficiently to incarnate on the Earth;
the others were obliged to withdraw again into the spiritual world.
There were periods before the separation of the Moon when these
conditions prevailed. The number of strong souls able to conquer
matter and populate the Earth became steadily less, with the result
that prior to the Lemurian epoch there was a period when wide areas
of the Earth were barren and the population less and less numerous,
because souls desiring to descend could find no suitable bodies.

What happened to
these souls? They were transported to the other planets which had
formed meanwhile out of the universal substance. Certain souls were
transported to Saturn, others to Jupiter, Mars, Venus or Mercury.
There was a period when only the very strongest souls were able to
come to the Earth during its great winter. The weaker souls had to
be taken into the guardianship of the other planets of our solar
system.

During the Lemurian
epoch there was actually a time when it may be said — with
approximate accuracy at any rate — that there was a single couple
in existence, one main pair (Haupt-paar) which had retained
sufficient strength to master the stubborn substance and to incarnate on
the Earth, to ‘hold out’ as it were through the period when
the Moon was separating from the Earth. This separation made it possible
again for human substance to be refined and rendered suitable to
receive the weaker souls; the descendants of this one main pair were
therefore able to live in more pliable substance than had been
available before the separation of the Moon. Then, by degrees, all
the souls returned to the Earth from Mars, Jupiter, Venus, Mercury
and Saturn; and through propagation the souls gradually returning to
the Earth from the planets constituted the descendants of the first
main pair.

Thus the Earth was
re-peopled. And during the latter part of the Lemurian until far into
the Atlantean epoch, an ever-increasing number of souls descended,
having waited on the other planets until a time came when they were
able to incarnate in earthly bodies. In this way the Earth was
re-populated and the Atlantean peoples came into existence, guided by
the Atlantean Initiates in the ‘Oracles’.
[ 3 ]

In ancient Atlantis
there were great sanctuaries where Initiates worked. These sanctuaries
were organized in such a way that one might be called the ‘Mars
Oracle’, another the ‘Jupiter Oracle’, another the
‘Saturn Oracle’ and so on. The variety of these
Oracle-sanctuaries was due to
the differences among human beings. For those souls who had waited on
Mars, instruction and guidance were provided in the Mars Oracles; for
those who had waited on Jupiter, in the Jupiter Oracles, and so on.
Only a few chosen pupils could be instructed in the great Sun Oracle.
These were the most direct descendants of the main pair who had lived
through the Earth's critical period — the strong, ancestral couple
called in the Bible ‘Adam and Eve’. There we find something
that tallies exactly with the facts revealed by the Akashic
Chronicle, so that the Bible is substantiated even where its content
seems improbable.

At the head of the
Sun Oracle to which the other Oracles were subordinate was the greatest
of the Atlantean Initiates, the Sun-Initiate, who was also the
‘Manu’, the leader of the Atlantean peoples. When the time
of the great catastrophe was approaching, the Manu assumed the task of
leading to the East those whom he found suitable for his
mission — which was to establish a starting-point for the
civilizations of the post-Atlantean epoch. This Initiate gathered
around him men who always included the most direct descendants of
‘Adam and Eve’, the first ancestral pair who had survived
the Earth's winter. These men were brought up and trained in the immediate
environment of the great Initiate. The whole of the teaching imparted
to them was organized in such a way that at the appropriate point of
time in evolution it was always possible for the right influences to
be sent forth from the sanctuary led by the Manu, the Initiate of the
Sun Oracle. Let us suppose that at a certain point in evolution a
rejuvenation of civilization was necessary; traditions preserved in
humanity had become antiquated and required a new impetus; a new
culture needed to be inaugurated. Provision for this had to be
made — and was actually made, in many different ways — in the
sanctuary under the great Initiate of the Sun Oracle.

During the first
period of the post-Atlantean epoch, men specially prepared were sent
to one place or another in order to carry into the world, as the
result of their careful training, what might be required by the
people concerned. This Oracle-sanctuary which was situated in a
hidden region of Asia, never failed to provide for the right
influence to be exercised upon the particular civilizations.

Five to six centuries
after the advent of the great Buddha, there dawned a very crucial
time. Buddhism had become in need of rejuvenation. The mature and
sublime conceptions taught by Buddha needed to pass through a
fountain of youth in order that they might be revealed to mankind in
a new form, filled with fresh, rejuvenating forces. Very special
forces had to be provided for humanity. These forces were not to be
found in any single individual who had worked in the world outside.
Whoever works for the world wears out his strength, and this wearing
out of strength simply means ‘growing old’. Civilization after
civilization arose at various points of time: first, the ancient
Indian, then the ancient Persian, then the Egypto-Chaldean, and so
on; great and notable leaders of humanity were at all times
present — leaders who devoted their highest and best forces to
humanity and its progress. The Holy Rishis, Zarathustra who was the
inaugurator of the Persian civilization, Hermes, Moses, the leaders
of Chaldean culture — all devoted their forces to the same end.
By virtue of their achievements they were the best leaders for their
times. Think of some personality in ancient India: he incarnated
again and again, reappeared in this or that incarnation, in the
Persian, in the Egypto-Chaldean epoch — and his soul became more
and more mature; he rose to stages of greater maturity but thereby
lost the fresh force of youth. A man may be capable of momentous
achievements when he has become a mature soul as the result of
efforts made in the course of many incarnations — but his soul
has aged. He may be able to give splendid teaching, he may achieve a
great deal for humanity, but he would have had to sacrifice his
youthful freshness and vigour while thus evolving to higher
stages.

Let us take one of
the greatest Individualities who have worked in the course of human
evolution: Zarathustra. It was he who brought the sublime message of
the Sun Spirit from the profoundest depths of the spiritual world to
the humanity of his time; it was he who directed the souls of men to
the great Spirit who later appeared as Christ; it was he who proclaimed:
‘In the Sun lives Ahura Mazdao, and He will come to the Earth!’
Zarathustra spoke words of immense significance concerning Ahura
Mazdao. Only his profound spiritual knowledge and highly developed
clairvoyance could behold that Being of whom the Holy Rishis said that
He, ‘Vishva Karman’, dwelt beyond their sphere. This was the
same Being whom Zarathustra called ‘Ahura Mazdao’ and whose
significance for humanity he proclaimed. A spirit of great maturity
lived in the body of Zarathustra, even in the days when he founded
the ancient Persian civilization.

We can well imagine
that this Individuality rose to higher and higher stages during his
subsequent incarnations, becoming more and more mature, more and more
capable of the greatest sacrifices on behalf of humanity. Those of
you who have heard other lectures of mine will know that Zarathustra
gave up his astral body to Hermes, the leader of the Egyptian
civilization, and his etheric body to Moses, the leader of the
Hebrews. Such deeds can be accomplished only by a soul of very
advanced development. Zarathustra was then reborn in Chaldea six hundred
years before our era (at the time of Buddha in India) and worked there as
the great teacher ‘Nazarathos’ or ‘Zaratas’, who
was also the teacher of Pythagoras. All this was within the power of the
former leader and inaugurator of the ancient Persian civilization.
Since the days of ancient Persia he had become more and more mature,
but when Buddhism needed rejuvenation this task was not within his
powers, as you will understand from the foregoing. It was not
possible for him to provide youthful forces, developed under
childlike conditions until puberty, which could then be given over to
the Nirmanakaya of Buddha. Precisely because he had reached such a
high stage of development it would not have been possible for
Zarathustra to develop as a child at the beginning of our era in such
a way that the required results would have been forthcoming. Were we
to review all the Individualities whose powers were unfolded at that
time, we should find no single one capable of furnishing, in his
twelfth year, such forces as were needed for the rejuvenation of
Buddhism. Zarathustra was a great and unique Individuality, an
altogether exceptional case. Yet not even Zarathustra himself could
have ensouled the body of Jesus up to the time of puberty in such a
way as to enable the discarded astral sheath to unite with the
Nirmanakaya of Buddha. Whence, then, came the great vivifying,
vitalising power of the Nathan Jesus-child?

It came from the
Mother-Lodge of humanity directed by the sublime Sun-Initiate, the
Manu. A great individualised power (eine grosse individuelle Kraft)
had there been nurtured and fostered. This individualised power, this
‘Individuality’, was then sent down into the child born of the
parents called ‘Joseph’ and ‘Mary’ in the Gospel
of St. Luke. Who was this Being?

To answer this
question we must go back to the time before the Luciferic influence
had penetrated into the astral body of man. This influence approached
humanity at the time when the ancestral human couple were living on the
Earth. This ancestral couple had been strong enough to master human
substance and to incarnate, but had not been strong enough to resist the
Luciferic influence. The effects of the influence extended into the
astral bodies of this couple too, with the consequence that it was
impossible to allow all the forces that were in ‘Adam and
Eve’ to be transmitted to their descendants. The physical body had
necessarily to be transmitted through the generations, but the
leadership of humanity held back a portion of the etheric body. This
was expressed by saying: ‘Men have eaten of the Tree of Knowledge of
Good and Evil’ — that is to say, they have partaken of the
Luciferic influence; but it was also said: ‘The possibility of
eating also of the Tree of Life must now be taken from them.’ This
means that certain of the forces of the etheric body were kept back
and did not pass on to the descendants. Thus after the Fall, certain
forces were no longer in ‘Adam’, and the still guiltless
part of his being was nurtured and fostered in the great Mother-Lodge of
humanity. This was, so to speak, the Adam-soul as yet untouched by human
guilt, not yet entangled in what had actually caused the ‘Fall’
of man.
These pristine forces of the Adam-Individuality were
preserved; they were there and were then led as a provisional
‘Ego’ to the child born to Joseph and Mary. Thus in
his early years this Jesus-child bore within him the power of the
original progenitor of earthly humanity.

This soul had
remained young in the truest sense. It had not been led through
incarnations but had been kept at a very early stage — like the
child in our hypothetical educational experiment. Who, then, was the
Being in the child born to Joseph and Mary of the Nathan line? The
progenitor of humanity, the ‘old Adam’ as a ‘new
Adam!’ This secret was known to St. Paul and lies behind his words.
And St. Luke, the writer of the Gospel — who was a pupil of St. Paul
— knew it too. For this reason he speaks of it in a special way. He
knew that a very definite process was necessary in order that this
spiritual substance might be led down to humanity; he knew that a
blood-relationship reaching back to ‘Adam’ was necessary.
Hence for Joseph he shows a lineage reaching back to Adam who issued
directly from the spiritual world and in the words of the Gospel was a
‘son of God’. The sequence of generations is traced back
to God himself.

A mystery of great
significance is contained in the genealogical chapter of St. Luke's
Gospel, namely that homogeneous blood had to flow through the
generations and unbroken sequence be maintained until the last
descendant, in order that the spirit too might he led down to the
descendants when the time was fulfilled. And so this infinitely
youthful Being was united with the body born of Joseph and Mary of
the Nathan line — a Being untouched by earthly destinies, a young
soul whose powers, if we wanted to discover their origin, would have
to be traced back to ancient Lemuria. This Being alone was strong
enough to penetrate into the astral sheath and, when this sheath was
detached, to pass over to it the forces it needed in order to
establish a living union with the Nirmanakaya of Buddha.

We may therefore ask:
What is actually described to us in the Gospel of St. Luke when it
speaks of Jesus of Nazareth?

In the first place it
describes a human being whose physical body, in respect of
blood-kinship, is to be traced back to Adam — to the times when,
in the period of devastation on the Earth, humanity was saved through
an ancestral pair. It further describes the incarnation of a soul who
had waited the longest before incarnating. In the Nathan Jesus-child
there was present the Adam-soul as it was before the Fall — the
soul which had waited longest. We may therefore say, fantastic as it
will seem to modern humanity, that the Individuality who had been led
into the Jesus-child by the great Mother-Lodge had not only descended
from the physically oldest generations of mankind but was also, in a
sense, the incarnation of the very first member of humanity.

We know now who was
presented in the temple and shown to Simeon, and who, according to
St. Luke, was the ‘Son of God’. St. Luke was not speaking of the
present human being but was testifying that this was the
reincarnation of a Being who was the earliest blood-ancestor of all
the generations.

And now to summarize
what has been said. In the fifth–sixth century before our era there
lived in India the great Bodhisattva whose mission it was to bring to
humanity truths that were gradually to arise in humanity itself. He
gave the impulse for this and thereby became Buddha. Hence he does
not again appear in an earthly body; he appears in the Nirmanakaya, the
‘Body of Transformation’, but only as far as the etheric-astral
world. The shepherds, being for the moment clairvoyant, see him in
the form of the angelic host, for they are meant to behold in vision
what is being announced to them. In his Nirmanakaya the Buddha
inclines over the child born to Joseph and Mary of the Nathan line
— for a very special purpose.

What the Buddha had
been able to bring to humanity needed to be present in a mature form;
it was difficult to understand for it came from great spiritual
heights. If what Buddha had achieved hitherto was to become
universally fruitful, it was necessary for an entirely fresh and
youthful force to flow into it. He had to draw this force from the
Earth by inclining over a human child from whom he could receive all
the youthful forces from the astral sheath when it was detached. Such
a child had been born from the line of generations — a child
whose lineage the one who best understood it could trace back to the
ancestor of humanity, back to the young soul of humanity during the
Lemurian age, a child to whom he (St. Luke) could point as the
reincarnated ‘new Adam’. This child, whose soul was
the mother-soul of humanity — a soul kept young through the ages
— lived in such a way that all his youthful forces rayed into the
astral body, and when the astral sheath was detached it rose upwards and
united with the Nirmanakaya of Buddha.

These facts do not,
however, include everything that helps us to understand the wonderful
Event of Palestine; they present one aspect only. We now know who
was born in Bethlehem when Joseph and Mary travelled thither from
Nazareth, and we know whose coming had been announced to the
shepherds; but that is not all. Much that is strange and significant
took place at the beginning of our era in order to bring about the
greatest Event in the evolution of humanity. For a better
understanding of what gradually led up to that Event, we must still
consider the following.

In the ancient Hebrew
people there was a line of generations descending from David. We learn
from the Bible that David had two sons, Solomon and Nathan. Thus two
lines of descent, the ‘Solomon line’ and the ‘Nathan
line’ stemmed from David. Leaving aside the intermediate members,
we can say: At the beginning of our era, descendants both of the Solomon
line and of the Nathan line of the House of David were living in Palestine.
In Nazareth there lived a man named ‘Joseph’, a descendant
of the Nathan line; he had a wife, ‘Mary’. And in Bethlehem
there lived a descendant of the Solomon line, also named
‘Joseph’. It is not in the least surprising that there were
two men of David's lineage named Joseph and that each was married to a
Mary as the Bible says. Thus at the beginning of our era there were two
couples in Palestine, both bearing the names of ‘Joseph’ and
‘Mary’. The Bethlehem couple traced back its origin to the
‘Solomon’ or kingly line of the House of David, and the other
(the Nazareth couple) to the ‘Nathan’ or priestly line. To
this latter couple (of the Nathan line) was born the child described to
you yesterday and to-day. This child provided an astral sheath that could
eventually be absorbed into the Nirmanakaya of Buddha. At the time when
the child was due to be born, this couple of the Nathan lineage journeyed
from Nazareth to Bethlehem as St. Luke relates — ‘to be
taxed’. The genealogical table is given in his Gospel.

The other couple did
not originally reside in Nazareth but in Bethlehem; this is related
by the writer of the Gospel of St. Matthew. This couple of the
Solomon line also had a child named ‘Jesus’. In the body of this
child too a great Individuality was living, but the child had a
different task to fulfil. The wisdom of the world is indeed profound!
It was not the function of this child to impart fresh forces of youth
to the astral sheath; his mission was to bring to humanity that which
only a mature soul can bring. Under the guidance of all the Powers
concerned, this child was able to be the reincarnation of the
Individuality who had once taught the mysteries of Ahura Mazdao to
men in ancient Persia; who had once given up his astral body to
Hermes and his etheric body to Moses, and who had appeared again as
Zarathas or Nazarathos, the great teacher of Pythagoras in ancient
Chaldea. This Individuality was none other than Zarathustra. The
Ego of Zarathustra was reincarnated in the child of whom the Gospel of
St. Matthew relates that he was born of a couple named Joseph and
Mary who descended from the kingly or Solomon line of the House of
David and resided, originally, in Bethlehem.

Thus we find one part
of the truth presented in the Gospel of St. Matthew and the other
part in that of St. Luke. Both accounts must be taken literally, for
truth is complex. We know now who was born from the priestly line of
the House of David. But we know too that from the kingly line there
was born the Individuality who had once worked in ancient Persia as
Zarathustra and had inaugurated the ‘kingly’ or
‘magic’ science of the ancient Persian kingdom. Thus the
two Individualities lived side by side: the young Adam-Individuality
in the child of the priestly line of the House of David, and the
Zarathustra-Individuality in the child of the kingly line. How and
why all this took place, and how evolution was further guided —
of this we shall say more tomorrow.

Notes:

1.
Many courses of lectures on Education were given by Dr. Steiner
in later years and are available in English translation. Among them
are the following:
Study of Man
(1919),
The Spiritual Ground of Education
(1922),
Education and Modern Spiritual Life
(1923),
The Kingdom of Childhood
(1924).